The Pink Tie, jumbo size, hangs on the Math and Computer building
on major occasions. This photo (by Stephen Forrest) is from the summer of
2002.

New students meet Tie as term starts

This morning brings all the chaos of a new year and a new term -- and
for more than 100 UW students, a whole new life, the beginning of their
university careers. It's even orientation week.

UW has always admitted a few first-year students in January, but this year
-- to help cope with the double-cohort crowding -- more than 100 applicants
were "deflected" from September to January, and hit campus this week for
the first time. Peter Burroughs, UW's director of admissions,
said exact figures on the number of brand-new first-year students in
math and, on a smaller scale, in arts will be available later this week.

The student Math Society, with support from the faculty of mathematics and
UW's student services office, has a lively
orientation program
planned -- "the most amazing orientation ever", according to co-chairs
Yolanda Dorrington, Louis Mastorakos and Craig D'Amelio.

Yesterday was residence move-in day -- not just for new first-year
students, most of whom are in Village I, but for returning upper-year
students as well. Today, the new students are being offered academic
sessions, tours, and a chance to "earn your tie", giving them just as much
in the way of
Pink
Tie bragging rights as mathies who got here four months
earlier. There are more events tomorrow, and Wednesday will be the first
day of classes for the newcomers, followed by a semi-formal dance in the
evening.

Bookstore hours this week

Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Back to regular hours (8 to
5) as of Friday. TechWorx and the UW Shop will also have extended
hours this week.

Upper-year students, meanwhile, start winter term classes today.
Some of them even have their textbooks already, as the bookstore
provided an unusual Sunday afternoon opening yesterday. Sunday was
also move-in day at the residences, where about 800 students were
expected, including new first-years, returning co-op students and
others who weren't in the Villages during the fall term.

For the first time in history, I'm told, UW's residences are full
this term, with people sleeping in some 4,419 beds in UW Place and
the four Villages.
Yep, four; the Columbia Lake townhouses are now "Columbia Lake Village",
and it's grown, with the opening of the first 96 houses for graduate
students, to the north of the original cluster.

Wilmot Court, one of the low-rise buildings at UW Place, is closed for
renovations this term, being converted from apartments to residence-style
groupings of rooms. It'll hold 255 students when it reopens next fall.

Burt Matthews at his desk in Needles Hall, 1974

UW mourns its second president

Burton C. (Burt) Matthews, who was the
second president of UW, died Friday at the age of 77.

Matthews became president in 1970 when -- seeking
a successor to the founding
president, the charismatic Gerry Hagey -- the 13-year-old university looked
for an established scholar and administrator. The search committee found a
small-town Ontario boy who had become a professor of soil science and
was serving as vice-president (academic) of the University of Guelph.

Tall, good-looking, and with a pleasant word for everybody,
Matthews arrived at a time when "student power" unrest was at its height in
North American universities, and when Waterloo was becoming just big
enough to need written policies on everything from salary processes to
the structure of its own governing bodies. Matthews -- skilled at
listening and consulting, but equally skilled at guiding the
decision-making process -- laid the
administrative foundation for the next quarter-century.

In 1972 the Ontario legislature passed a new University of Waterloo Act.
Among the dozens of policy documents approved at UW between 1970 and
1981 was the "Matthews-Dubinski Agreement" that set out the relationship
between the university and its professors, without union certification.

The university's construction boom was almost over by the time Matthews
arrived, but his term saw the completion of half a dozen new buildings and the
steady growth of the university's enrolment and expansion of its
research activity. Academic innovations included the Guelph-Waterloo
Centre for Graduate Work in Chemistry, and the accounting "group",
forerunner of today's school of accountancy.

At the same time, Matthews led the university as it coped with the rapid
inflation of the 1970s and the government financial cutbacks that
resulted -- mild by comparison with what would come in the 1990s, but
tough for their time.

In 1981, Matthews left UW to become chair of the Ontario
council on University Affairs, a government advisory body, and later
served a term as president of the University of Guelph. He also lent his
experience to international development as chair of the board of the
International Center for the Improvement of Maize and Wheat, based in
Mexico City.

UW named him president emeritus in 1991, and also named a building after
him: B. C. Matthews Hall, home of the faculty of applied health sciences.

Graduate students can apply online

UW will be the first university in Ontario to accept
electronic applications to
graduate programs, thanks to a project involving the
Ontario Universities Application
Centre. OUAC already handles applications
for undergraduate study and programs in teaching, law and medicine
across the province.

"We are the first graduate studies partner with OUAC for a customized
on-line application," says Lynn Judge
(right), director of graduate studies academic
services at UW. She said it's likely that other graduate schools across
the province will start using OUAC's facilities as well.

"Several graduate faculties and schools in Canada have
implemented on-line applications using other software products over the
past few years," she noted.

Judge said the collaboration "was initiated by UW to develop
an electronic self-service application for graduate studies applicants and
to implement data interfaces to populate the Student Information System.

"A
group led by the GSO, including several academic department/school/faculty
representatives defined data and web design requirements. Information
Systems & Technology developed the UW data interface and data transfer
process. OUAC utilized facilities and expertise to design standard edits
and a distribution interface and install links to UW Graduate Studies
supplemental forms, graduate program requirements and admission evaluation
data.

She said her colleagues "examined three other products and selected OUAC for a
number of reasons including our undergraduate experience with distribution
and transfer interfaces; the OUAC fee processing service (credit card
payments) and automated acknowledgement, and their ability to manage
required changes such as table updates for new programs and degrees on
request; level of customization Our experience working with OUAC to
design and implement the system was very positive."

Pixels in the big picture

A couple of administrative positions at UW have new occupants as of
January 1. Robert Park, professor of anthropology, becomes associate dean
(computing) in the faculty of arts; William Chesney becomes chair of
the department of drama and speech communication.

The student awards office announces that Ontario Student Assistance
Program loans, Canada and Ontario Student Loans, "as well as some other
provincial loans", will be available beginning today. The office is on the
second floor of Needles Hall, and will have extended hours this week,
8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Regular hours, as of next week, are 9:30 to 4:00,
except Wednesdays only noon to 4 p.m.

As it does on the first working day every term, the
co-op and career services department is holding a professional
development day today. Says the week's events listing for the
department: "Human
Resources will use most of the day presenting the first module of the
'Leadership
for Results' program to staff."

UW's voicemail system is no longer Meridian Mail -- it became CallPilot
on the Monday before Christmas. It's still reached at 888-4966 (that's
ext. 4966 for on-campus calls), but some of the prompts sound a little
different, and the familiar voice of "Ivy" is no longer with us. The
"migration" to the new system "was a complete success", says Greg Cummings
of information systems and technology. He notes that some messages received
during the changeover, which took much of the working day on December
22, may not be in the new system; they can be found instead by calling
ext. 4965.

The long-awaitedfitness centrein
the Columbia Icefield opens for business today. . . .
The key control office will be open 8:30 to 4:30 this week, rather
than closing for lunch hour as it does most of the time. . . .
The elevator in Ron Eydt Village is shut down for maintenance from
now through January 23. . . .